Sept. 1st – Colorado State – “We’ll Correct it. We’ll move on”

Colorado State out-gained Colorado in total yards, 397 to 345, but the Buff defense made plays when it counted, keeping the Rams out of the end zone in a 17-3 victory before a crowd of 73,932 at Sports Authority Field in Denver.

The Buffs raced out to a 17-0 lead less than two minutes into the second quarter, but were held scoreless the remaining 43 minutes of the game. Colorado State had two touchdowns (and two other long passes) called back by penalties, finishing the game 55 points shy of the 58 put up against Oregon State the week before. “Calls can go either way,” said Mike MacIntyre, who improved to 4-1 v. CSU at Colorado). “You’ve just got to keep playing … I was proud of the way our guys played. Offensively, we bogged down a few times, and that kept them in the game”.

Phillip Lindsay led the CU rushing attack, with 19 carries for 140 yards, including a 45-yard touchdown run in the first quarter. Quarterback Steven Montez went 21-for-29 for 202 yards, with his best play a 31-yard touchdown pass to Shay Fields early in the second stanza. Otherwise, Montez had an inconsistent night, including an interception thrown in the CSU end zone in the fourth quarter. “He was hot and cold”, said MacIntyre of Montez. “But he can make plays, and he’ll start making more plays”.

The win was the third straight for the Buffs against the Rams, giving Colorado its first three-game winning streak in the series since 2003-05.

Saturday morning, I got up to write my essay for the 2017 Rocky Mountain Showdown. Writing a post-game article on CU football games has been a ritual of mine since the start of the 1996 season, so it’s hardly a new routine.

There have been some games when I dreaded having to sit down to rehash the Buffs’ effort from the previous day (Montana State in 2006 immediately springs to mind), but there have been certainly been other games when I have relished the opportunity to revisit and delve into the minute details a CU victory.

Colorado sold out its ticket allotment for the 2017 Rocky Mountain Showdown, which translates to 38,859 tickets (11,395 students). Assuming that at least some of the tickets sold by the Denver Broncos and Ticketmaster were to Buff faithful, there were at least 40,000 CU fans (out of the 73,932 in attendance) at Sports Authority Field for CU’s 17-3 victory over Colorado State.

If you had gone up to those 40,000 Buff fans as they entered the stadium and offered them – sight unseen – a two-touchdown victory, I’m guessing that a good 90% would have taken the win and called it good.

And yet, after defeating the Rams by two touchdowns, and holding the high-powered CSU offense to three points, the Buffs were left to explain themselves.

“You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse, nothing stays the same,” said Mike MacIntyre after the game. “We’re going to go back, look what we’ve done and improve. We’ve got a lofty goal ahead of us that I believe we can do. We have to keep pushing ourselves. We’ll do that. We’ll be a much more improved team next week”.